The child abuse victims support group Broken Rites will tell the Victorian Parliamentary inquiry into the handling of child abuse that two boys died while in the care of a religious organisation.

The inquiry was launched by the State Government earlier this year after a concerted campaign by victims' groups.

Broken Rites spokesman Dr Wayne Chamley alleges two boys died in the 1960s while under the care of the Hospitaller Order of St John of God at Lilydale and Cheltenham.

Dr Chamley says survivors have passed on the stories.

"One of those was in a bed beside a man that I did a mediation for and that man said that that boy had just recently arrived in the orphanage and when he woke up the child was dead," he told ABC local radio.

"The other one was thrown down a set of staircases."

Dr Chamley says the children had no families.

He says he worked with police for eight years to try and move the investigation along.

"The police were just never resourced. They were never resourced to get to the bottom of this," he said.

He says the cases were put in the public record in 2004 when he testified before a Senate inquiry and he is calling for a national royal commission of inquiry.

"We need a Commonwealth-initiated royal commission into all this. There's too much going on all over the country," he said.

"It's not in the past. It's still going on now.

"The big problem now is visiting priests. They fly in ... nobody knows what their bona fides are."

The parliamentary committee has revealed it has taken steps to get documents from the Catholic Church, as part of its inquiry.

The committee is hearing from people who work on sex abuse investigations for Victoria Police.

Patrick Tidmarsh, a Victoria Police adviser, says it is extraordinary that the Catholic Church has its own system for dealing with allegations of child sex abuse.

"I don't think they should be investigating themselves. I think that is absolutely the number one issue," he said.

"I find it personally extraordinary that an organisation has set up a separate system, particularly one where if you volunteer for that system, you give up your rights to any other system."

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